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U.S. Law Blogs May Lag Behind Law Blogs Published In Other Countries

By Kevin O'Keefe on March 9, 2021
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Remember a time when legal blogging was blogging.

Lawyers penned law blogs to share information, insight and commentary to help others – lawyers and lay people – and advance the law. Legal blogs were real publications.

A byproduct of this style of blogging was a reputation and relationships, much the same as speaking and writing built for a lawyer, before the advent of the net.

Today, ask a lawyer in the States about a law blog, and they’re apt to assume you mean something a lawyer pays to have put on their website to get traffic to their website. The lawyer doesn’t write the blog.

As if traffic to a lawyer’s website is the panacea for getting clients when the leading way people find a lawyer is to ask a friend, relative or c0-worker.

Law blogs in the states, more for most lawyers – there are thousands of lawyers who know what a blog is and that only you as a lawyer can pen one – are like billboards.

Get one up on the side of the road for attention. All that’s required is money.

I spent part of Tuesday afternoon looking at legal blogs from Africa. Nothing led me to believe the law blogs I looked at were about web traffic, SEO and written by web marketing companies for lawyers.

The African law blogs were much like law blogs were in the United States. Written by legal authorities themselves – hundreds of them – sharing legal commentary, fostering discussion among the authorities, and bloggers looking to help legal professionals and people outside the profession.

I’m fairly certain Africa hasn’t yet seen the legal marketing companies pitching “content marketing” with blogs done for you as being what it takes to be a lawyer.

I can tell this by looking at the blogs, reading some of the posts and the about sections which explain what’s driving the blog and the bloggers.

Looking at legal blogs in the States eighteen years, I couldn’t imagine how lawyers could screw this one up, much as they already had in using the Internet for attention, versus engagement and publishing.

Most lawyers have screwed it up. Leaves international law blogs ahead – at least those I’ve seen from Africa.

With 30,000 legal bloggers, domestic and international, curating their blogs through LexBlog, I know the aggregate insightful and valuable U.S. legal commentary generated by blogs exceeds that of international legal blog commentary.

International law blogs just lack the polluted “law blogging” for marketing.

Photo of Kevin O'Keefe Kevin O'Keefe

I am a trial lawyer, turned legal tech entrepreneur, now leading the largest community of legal publishers in the world at LexBlog, Inc.

I am a lawyer of 39 years. Wanting to be a lawyer since I was a kid, I have loved…

I am a trial lawyer, turned legal tech entrepreneur, now leading the largest community of legal publishers in the world at LexBlog, Inc.

I am a lawyer of 39 years. Wanting to be a lawyer since I was a kid, I have loved almost every minute of it.

I practiced as a trial lawyer in rural Wisconsin for 17 years, representing plaintiffs, whether they were injury victims and their family members or small businesses.

In the mid-nineties, I discovered the Internet in the form of AOL. I began helping people by answering questions on AOL message boards and leading AOL’s legal community.

I later started my own listservs and message boards to help people on personal injury, medical malpractice, workers compensation and plaintiff’s employment law matters. Though we were green to technology and the Internet, USA Today said if my firm “didn’t stop what we were doing, we would give lawyers a good name.”

In 1999, I closed my law firm and we moved, as a family of seven, to Seattle to start my first company. Prairielaw.com was a virtual law community of people helping people, a sort of AOL on the law, featuring message boards, articles, chats, listervs and ask-a-lawyer.

Prairielaw.com was sold to LexisNexis, where it was incorporated into Martindale-Hubbell’s lawyers.com.

After a stint as VP of Business Development at LexisNexis, I founded LexBlog out of my garage in 2004 (no affiliation with LexisNexis).

Knowing lawyers get their best work from relationships and a strong word of mouth reputation, and not promoting themselves, I saw blogging as a perfect way for lawyers to build relationships and a reputation.

When I could not find someone to help me with my own blog, I started a company to provide what I needed. Strategy, professional design, platform, coaching, SEO, marketing and free ongoing support.

As a result of the outstanding work of my team of twenty and my blogging, the LexBlog community has grown to a community of over 30,000 legal professionals, world-wide.

Publishing my blog, Real Lawyers, now in its 18th year, I share information, news, and commentary to help legal professionals looking to network online, whether it be via blogging or other social media.

Blogging also enables me to think through my ideas – out loud and in an engaging fashion.

In addition to my blog, I liberally share others’ insight on Twitter. Feel free to engage me there as well on LinkedIn and Facebook.

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